


{empty set}

by two_nine_eighteen



Series: The Animal Chronicles [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Changing Tenses, Character Study, Experimental Style, Experimental writing, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Non-Sexual, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, Weird on Purpose, Writing Sandbox, inconsistent style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23535394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_nine_eighteen/pseuds/two_nine_eighteen
Summary: It’s so easy to hide behind logical explanations. Behind science and numbers. Behind the stage. Behind big words of dead languages. They’re constructs and they don’t break into shreds when you do.- someone smart, probably
Relationships: Crocodile/Donquixote Doflamingo
Series: The Animal Chronicles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695982
Comments: 22
Kudos: 23





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: It's going to be a trip

305 centimetres minus 19.7 centimetres equal 285.3 centimeters.

Or:

10 feet minus 0.65 feet equal 9.36 feet.

This was still 32.2 centimeters or 1.06 feet higher that 253 centimeters. Or 8.3 feet, if you will.

But it was considerably less that the 52 centimeters or the 1.7 feet difference it used to be before.

There was nothing deep to these numbers. He was just juggling around with them in his head. His mind needed to be sharp and ready to kill at all times. He did all his calculations in his head, the important, the casual and the unnecessary ones. They were all the same. Numbers were numbers and they never changed their meaning. They described in a beautifully abstract way, detached from any distraction.

He moved on to calculating the weaponry and armament costs of the new mercenaries he’d hired. He had a budget of 30 mio. Beri to start with. He’d still need at least 40% for other things, so 12 mio. Beri were to be put aside. That left 18 mio. Beri to spend. The average weapon with enough ammunition was about 35’000 Beri (Handgun), 55’600 Beri (Shotgun) and a solid 83’320 Beri for a proper Bazooka. Shipping costs depended, and so did taxes, although the average rate was approximately 6.7%. For big weaponry this rate was increased by 7.5-10% He would get some good deals in the North Blue, knowing his connections.

The numbers started rumbling in his head. Weren’t they just nice to look at? So clean. So factual.

((12 x 35’000) x 0.067)+((9 x 55’600) x (0.067+(0.067 x 0.075)))+((16 x 83’320)x (0.067 + (0.067 x 0.1)))

> numerate

/ˈnjuːm(ə)rət/

_adjective_

adjective: **numerate**

  * having a good basic knowledge of arithmetic; able to understand and work with numbers.
  * Crocodile



#### Somewhere in the New World, three weeks prior

**An extraction of the ‘World Economic News’ February, Week 1 issue**

# THE END OF AN UNDERWORLD ERA -MARINE ANNOUNCES OFFICIAL EXECUTION DAY OF OF THE WORLDS MOST NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL DONQUIXOTE DOFLAMINGO

### -

### 

_It has barely been half a year since the former king of Dressrosa, broker of the Underworld and warlord Donquixote Doflamingo and his giant business has been taken down by non-other than the new emperor in the making, ‘Strawhat’ Monkey D. Luffy. After various ineffective attempts to free the criminal during his transportation to the worlds most renowned prison Impel Down, an honourable mention here is Jack ‘the Drought’, a 1 Billion Beri man from the Beast Pirates with no other captain than the legendary man Kaidou ‘of the 100 Beasts’, the captive arrived three weeks after his crushing defeat, to never see daylight again._

_The World Government had released a statement concerning their further actions with the criminal, that should be, after normal procedure be executed within the next month due to the severity of his crimes. The Government had stated that the warlord was too valuable in terms of knowledge to be executed in time of the usual schedule. This had caused various uproars and protests amongst people that were part of the criminals reign of terror and dictatorship. Mobs of people have roamed through the streets demanding the head of the ‘Heavenly Demon.’_

_Now, nearly six months later the Government has released a new official statement regarding the fate of the highly controversial criminal. The update of the situation may please many of those that had felt wronged by the Government decision before._

_The Statement was issued by New Marine Fleet Admiral Sakazuki himself. It contains the following information:_

> Due to rapidly changing situations, we hereby announce a retraction of the former statement that included the preservation of the life of criminal Donquixote Doflamingo. Our former conditions were solely based on valuable information the captive was clearly aware of. The temporary cancellation of a proper execution date had been approved of by the World Government in order to gain the most information out of the criminal. The information gathered will be used to go against further criminals involved with the Donquixote Network and their actions. To the people that were showing disdain to our previous decisions: Do not doubt us! Our main goal is to enforce absolute justice and it will be our goal until every pirate, bandit or revolutionary receives the punishment properly scaled to their crimes.

> _As for the criminal in question, the preparations for Donquixote Doflamingos execution have started. The execution will take place in one week. The time is scheduled for 1:00 pm, the place of execution will be New Marineford located in the New World. Manner of death: Death by beheading. The execution will be live-broadcasted all over the world. This involves large Plazas and Squares in various cities across the Grand Line and in the Blues. Marine protection will be provided in Sabaody, Loguetown and Water Seven. Announcement over._
> 
> […]

* * *

**An extraction of the ‘World Economic News’, February, Week 2 issue.**

# THE DAY IS NEAR. PREPARATIONS FOR GRAND EXECUTION IN LAST STAGES.

### -

_[…]The protests since have died down and/ or turned into praising parades for the Marine. Needless to say, the world is in great excitement to see another large criminal receiving justice. The number of new Marine recruits has doubled since the news of last week. The sales of Marine products has increased by 12.5%. The organization has clawed back to its position at the top for the most honourable citizen-protecting actions after a long time of doubts amongst the people. The execution will be held tomorrow. Due to the special occasion we will release an additional issue of our paper, containing the most important news and facts about the man beneath the guillotine and his execution.[…]_

* * *

> **It’s so easy to hide behind logical explanations. Behind science and numbers. Behind the stage. Behind big words of dead languages. They’re constructs and they don’t break into shreds when you do.**

\- someone smart, probably

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im having way too much fun editing this.


	2. Act 1 of 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SIR CROCODILE stares blankly at the wall.
> 
> The SHOW was TERRIBLE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering yes the entire thing is basically planned out and
> 
> yes its supposed to look like an absolute mess.
> 
> I also take the blame
> 
> or do I?

**Somewhere in the New World, three weeks prior.**

Needless to say, Crocodile wasn’t too fond about the news that day.

**Act 1 of 1**

Curtain Raiser

The CURTAIN opens revealing an EMPTY STAGE. The STAGE is closed of in front by a GLASS WINDOW and gives the ILLUSION of a STORE WINDOW. The LIGHT is DIMMED. It is completely SILENT. SIR CROCODILE stands alone in the middle, wearing a SUIT and a TIE. His HAIR is meticulously slicked back. His LEFT HAND is replaced with a GOLDEN HOOK. In his right hand he holds a NEWSPAPER. His eyes are fixed on the FRONT PAGE. He sinks his HAND and looks towards the CEILING while tacking a STEP back. The STEP echoes loudly on the WOODEN FLOOR.

LEFT VOICES (off stage, quiet): What are you going to do?

RIGHT VOICES (off stage, quiet): What are you going to do about it?

_and he can’t help it, the feeling of dread creeping up his spine. the lump in his throat. the part of him he’d so carefully tucked away was rising up, begging him to do something anything please_

SIR CROCODILE keeps looking at the CEILING, standing still.

LEFT VOICES (off stage, a little louder): You lost

RIGHT VOICES (off stage, a little louder): So much already

_memories started flooding in and if he wasn’t so terribly self-disciplined his hands would’ve started to shake_

SIR CROCODILE keeps looking at the CEILING, standing still. His RIGHT HAND clenches into a FIST while still holding the NEWSPAPER. Off stage two WATER PIPES are opened on either side and start FLOODING the STAGE.

LEFT VOICES (off stage, loud to drown out the water noises): What are we going to do?

RIGHT VOICES (off stage, loud to drown out the water noises and rhythmic): Lock the doors. Lock it back up. Lock the doors. Lock it back up. (It continues)

LEFT VOICES (loud): What am I going to do? About it? (It continues)

SIR CROCODILE drops the NEWSPAPER and finally looks down to his FEET. The WATER fills up the closed of STAGE and reaches his ANKLES. He appears distressed but he is not leaving the STAGE. The VOICES on both side rise to a CRESCENDO to a point where they are YELLING. The WATER reaches SIR CROCODILES WAIST.

The WATER rises faster and faster and the NEWSPAPER starts floating and whirls around in the currents. The WATER reaches SIR CROCODILES CHEST and the abruptly stops. So do the VOICES.

_what are you going to do? Is the last thing he hears his crippled memory whisper in agony. then his thoughts are locked away and there’s nothing but silence._

LEFT VOICES (quiet, asking): What am I going to do?

RIGHTS VOICES (quiet): Nothing.

LEFT VOICES (a little louder): Why?

RIGHT VOICES (a little louder): You can’t

LEFT VOICES (a little louder): Why?

RIGHT VOICES (a little louder): You shouldn’t

The WOODEN STAGE FLOOR opens up on both sides next to SIR CROCODILE and DRAINS the WATER in an instant. SIR CROCODILE, still wet, puts his hand on his HOOK and moves it as if it hurt. The HOLES on the STAGE stay open and BLOCK the way to the EXIT.

_something hurts but he can’t tell where it roots. he dismisses it as phantom pain from his missing left hand._

The CURTAIN falls.

Fin.

Curtain Raiser END.

**Act 1 of 1**

Scene 1

SIR CROCODILE sits in his BUREAU, somewhere in the NEW WORLD. The BUREAU is very sparse. On the wall is a CALENDAR, with a date circled in red. The DESK is mahogany. There are PAPERS and an expensive looking STYLOGRAPH on the table. A little further to the right there is a VIDEO TRANSMISSION SNAIL projection onto the opposite wall. It makes RAPID CLICKING NOISES in the otherwise silent surroundings.

SIR CROCODILE looks on edge. His attention is on the TRANSMISSION.

The VIDEO TRANSMISSION SNAIL shows the scenario of a PUBLIC EXECUTION. Right after the GUILLOTINE falls, there is loud CROWD CHEERING audible through the SPEAKERS of the TRANSMISSION SNAIL. A HEAD is shown tumbling down the SCAFFOLD.

SIR CROCODILE interrupts the VIDEO TRANSMISSION by pressing the off button on the SNAIL without looking at it.

SIR CROCODILE stares blankly at the wall.

The SHOW was TERRIBLE.

Fin.

END OF ACT 1.

* * *

305 centimetres minus 19.7 centimetres equals 285.3 centimeters.

Or:

10 feet minus 0.65 feet equal 9.36 feet.

19.7 centimetres or 0.65 feet is about the average length of a male human head.

* * *

If he had to choose a flavour to describe whatever the mess was that they had had, he’d choose bitter. Bitterness really encapsulated everything perfectly.

 _Quinine_ is the basis substance for the scale that describes bitterants, with a threshold of 8 micromolar in order to taste its bitterness. It has an index of 1.They, however, started as _Brucine_ , which was about 11 times more bitter than _Quinine_. So, their first encounter was already more than most people could bear.

The weather was bad. Roger was dead. Loguetown was cramped with people from all over and they were wet to the bones, cold and bloodthirsty. Their first encounter wasn’t nice. Their first encounter started with Crocodile finding the head of his sub-officer Pollux cleanly severed on the desk of his room in his ship. Not a single droplet of blood stained the table. A very clean job, professionally executed.

A teenager sat on the window sill, wrapped in feathers. He was smiling widely. “Pleased to make your acquaintance”, was the first thing he said. Then: “Are you angry?”

He left, bruised, bleeding and beaten. But still smiling.

_He’s still in his bureau, smoking. His lips don’t feel the cigar. His fingers feel feathers. A **Phoenicopterus roseus** is not very soft._

Whenever they met, bile rose through their throats like the water does during tides. _Quassin_ : Chemical Composition C22H28O6,  White, crystalline substance. 50 times more bitter than _Quinine_ ; bitter threshold at about 0.08 parts per million. A whiff and you’ll retch.

The ‘main’ Donquixote Family consists -consisted- of 16 people, including the boss himself. The Spades: Pica, Buffalo, Baby 5, Gladius. Main task: Assault squad. The Diamonds: Diamante, Lao G, Machvise, Dellinger, Señor Pink. Main task: Fighting brigade. Both of them hazards to be reckoned with. The Clubs: Trebol, Sugar, Giolla. Main Task: Special Powers. The Hearts: Vergo ⴕ, Rosinante ⴕ, Monet ⴕ. Main Task: ~~Espionage~~ Being Dead. All of them. Nowadays of course.

No one talks – talked – about Castor in front of the young master. According to the existential feeling of self-preservation it is – was- best not to mention the 17th Donquixote Family member that, one day out somewhere on an island on the Grand Line, had been replaced as the flag of the Donquixote ship. No one talked about him. Because the incident was never supposed to occur.

Hanging there, completely dried out, mummified, he fluttered lightly in the wind, from where his shirt had been tied to the flagpole. His brittle parts had left crumbles, flakes, dust on deck. Sand, if you will.

Amongst the crying family was a furious young man, feeling tiny in his pompous coat for not having protected his family. For not having been there. For not thinking about consequences, that actions could bring. Like a severed head on a desk.

The Young Master became fond of strategy shortly after that. When asked why, he’d say dramatically: “They shall dance beneath my fingers instead of taking them.”

The actual flag was nowhere to be found.

They should’ve been even by then. +1, -1, so a big 0 for both sides. They could’ve just left each other alone, shooting their cannons at each other from afar. Their hatred should have worked like two negative charges and push them apart and never let their fields cross ever again. That is, if the world were as simple as isolated examples of science. But the world was -is, as a matter of fact- complicated and stomps on isolated experiments of science and screams “There’s enough vacuum in space for your shitty standardized experiments!” at them. A ‘{} ≠{0}’- kind of situation.

_Another cigar stump wanders into the ashtray. It’s number six. It’s also 1:21 p.m. A new record._

And they met again. Out of all the times they’ve ever met before and out of all times they were to ever meet in the future, this was the worst one. _Denatonium saccharide_. Synthetic chemical substance. Bitterness index of 1000. Threshold of 0.01 parts per million. About 10 parts per million are enough to be unbearable for humans. Most bitter substance known to mankind. Used to make toxic substances taste so utterly vile that no one would attempt to consume it. To “Prevent accidental ingestion.”

But the two of them weren’t really humans. They were monsters and they devoured everything to please their pride. Nothing accidental there, really.

_His breath hitches, when he remembers. Not even now Crocodile can tell whether its crying, burning shame for past events, dread for the dead on transmission, or pulsating anger for his own actions that makes his face heat up. It always does when he remembers, but he could never pinpoint the cause of blood rushing through his head. ‘Or maybe’, he thinks bitterly, ‘maybe science can’t explain this one.’_

No crews, no family this time around. Only captains, head to head. A warlord meeting on top of the Red Line. A spacious dining hall within a gigantic castle to please boasted personalities. A waiting room, big with velvety walls and expensive furniture. And guests that slam their feet on mahogany, tear paintings down out of boredom or start petty fights with each other because “did you finish the fucking wine?!”. They _are_ Warlords and they’d feel ashamed if they didn’t fulfil both the ‘war’ and the ‘lord’ parts of their titles.

It’s not peaceful.

The discussions are aggressive. Everyone cares for their own sheep. The Government does only care about their façade. There’s a lot of shouting, yelling, insulting. Things thrown across the table. Death threats spoken, sworn and Government property destroyed. At least six stab wounds were counted. Sengoku murmurs something about three new grey hairs. All of them are horrible people. Except Kuma, maybe. He’s quiet most of the time. Then again he’s a tyrant, so he’s somewhat horrible too.

It gets worse during the break. Because there were no government problems to discuss during break. And when there are no other topics to fight about, they get personal. Most of the warlords stick with provocation. Riling the others up, testing their waters. Seeing who could be the first to fall from their ranks right into the sharpened guillotine. But two of the warlords have a deeper rooted issue buried in the depths of personal trauma. Intertwined roots, an abomination with two heads of two dead people they had cared about. It escalates.

The hall’s not recognizable. What can be torn is torn, what can be sliced in half is. Holes in the wall, big enough to fit through plaster the room. There’s blood all over and the air is thick with tension and the smell of iron despite no one being there anymore. When the Fleet Admiral enters the scene, he curses the system. “I can’t believe were tolerating this. Death to them, for god’s sake. To all of them.” He wouldn’t have said that if he knew that the reason for the hall not being in crumbles were Kumas skilled paws. They created the necessary distance to cool the fire in some heads.

* * *

Some island somewhere sometime – thank you, Kuma.

Crocodiles memory gets hazy here. He does not remember too much about this anymore, mainly because his journey to his destination had been a horrid flight initiated right before his hook would have pierced Doflamingos left eye- Thank you, Kuma.

10 days, says the crumpled note in his hand, slipped in there by Kuma before catapulting him with 200 miles per hour. 10 days until the next Marine boat was going to come pick them up. No chance of early escape, since this tiny rock of an island was apparently in the middle of the Calm Belt. He’s too exhausted to be angry at this point. He’s still bleeding too. All his hatred against Doflamingo has puffed away and what’s left are the white walls in an empty head. He falls asleep without wanting to.

When he wakes up he’s sure he’s still dreaming. Because when you wake up the nightmare’s supposed to be over not starting. 10 days. Wounded. On an abandoned Island, somewhere without any means to contact anyone. Not a big deal, like that. He’d been in worse situations. The really big deal was that abandoned didn’t mean alone. The flamingo was here too.

Misery loves company. Thank you, Kuma.

* * *

Day 1.

feathery shithead here too. I don’t know if I want him to die or if I want to die. Attempted to kill him, failed. Will try again tomorrow. Gotta be wary, though. He wants me dead too.

He’s gone.

Day 2.

Morning: Surviving’s easy enough, resources are easily available. Wounds might however get infected, especially that slash on the back. Mihawk’s too damn skilled with a steak knife. Can’t reach it properly. Hurts.

Midday: campsite established. Feels weird, surviving like that. Guess im not used to not having my personal contacts and stuff available. Keeping check on the coastline, just in case the marine makes it earlier than expected.

Afternoon: exploring the rest of this place. Im close to a cave like rock formation that’s good for hiding. Overgrown with moss and everything. Further inward is a jungle like forest. Perhaps with large predators? West coast rocky, steep cliffs. Hard to get anywhere in that direction. East coast sandy, flat. Better territory for me, also better lookout.

Night: back at camp. Found the brats hideout, somewhere on a hill, pretty much on the other island side. More open fields there too. Good. The further away the better. Im still gonna try get rid of him, though. He deserves it.

Day 3.

Morning: weather good, no wind at all. Calm Belt I suppose. Planning assault on flamingo. Also have to check the coastlines.

Midday: Nothing out on sea. It gets really warm here. Not a breeze at all. Nasty and distracting.

Afternoon: done with working out a plan against flamingo. Have to make some preparations. Assault should be ready in three or at max four days. Also fresh water and washing out the bandages. And food.

Night: doesn’t cool down at night here either. Its really warm, makes it hard to get rest. I should, though.

Day 4:

Morning: Sun is shining, but it’s weirdly hazy outside. Sort of a blurry fog. Still warm and damp outside. Starting routine.

Midday: climate here is really tiring. Damn heat. Plan halfway set up for attack. Birds camp still at the same place.

Afternoon: suns about to set, have to prepare further. The heats getting to me.

Day 5:

Midday: I slept through till noon. Never, and I mean _never_ happened before. Feel horrendous, everything is shaky. My back feels weirdly numb. Need to make final preparations to take flamingo out. Nearly done.

Evening: Plan set up. I could do it tonight, but I don’t- I’m tired and not risking it. He’s obnoxious but still a threat. Better safe than sorry.

Day 6:

Early before sunrise: Can’t sleep. My back hurts so fucking bad

Twenty minutes later: I think it might be swollen.

Five minutes later: it definitely is. It’s fucking infected. And it’s the one place I cant reach and fix on my own. Im so going to go after Mihawk after all of this is over.

Two hours later: if I don’t die beforehand, that is. And that – this is concerningly enough an actual possibility. Im trying to clean it but I cant see the injury properly. The heat here doesn’t help at all.

Sometime in the afternoon: I think i- its not the island that’s getting warmer every day. I seem to have a fever. It would explain my blurry vision and my rapidly declining balance. I must keep calm.

Later: I _might_ actually die. I might actually _die_. I _might_ actually _die_. This is so fucking unreal, I could howl with laughter if it wouldn’t give my position away.

I can’t though. Not quite yet.

I still need to get my revenge on mihawk.

Fresh water, something to eat somewhere

-the assault on flamingo. that was planned that so well… Wait, wait.

Flamingo. Hill. South.

.wait _wait_ ,, the bird,,

hes on thisisland too and im drowning in this damn fever . im such an easy target right now, for god’s sake HOW on earth

did it come to this’ how did I let that happen, , an d

these black dots in my vision don’t help me be focused. I need to focus. Focus. Good. God, this is some _awful_ -

Focus, damnit! 

I’m Sir Crocodile, 28 years old, Blood type S, 253 centimetres tall, my birthday’s September 5th, im stuck on this Island for at least four more days, I have a deadly infected wound on my back that is most likely going to kill me if I don’t do anything about it, I ate the suna suna no mi and its not helping because I cant turn my back into sand properly because of the ~~pus~~ _blood_ coming out, im a warlord with an 81’000’000 Ex-bounty on me so they’re going to search for me at some point, my Japanese VA is Ryuzaburo Otomo and he’s- wait, what?

What? What did i think? Did i think? i did? Think, I mean. Thinking’s so hard right now. It’s getting dark. Is it? Time is somewhere, but not night. Why are my eyes clo-

 _When he falls to the ground, straight onto his back, he doesn’t even wince. He’s out cold_.

Day 7:

?

Day 8:

> [Imagine you had twenty buckets of wall paint, all in different, shrill colours. The warm colours are glowing and hot and burn everything you try to cover and the cold colours freeze every surface you paint. But before you can ask for a canvas, the colors are mixed together in a horrendous, disjointed concoction and all the buckets are emptied and slathered across you and you’d freeze-no, burn- freeze? and you realize _you’re_ _the_ _canvas_ while only seeing a blur of colour. Meanwhile some lunatic planted the empty buckets next to your head and hammered the drum solo of his life on them with his bare hands and every nerve cell acts as an echo chamber and as a noise amplifier and your head just splits right through the middle and so does your body and- that’s about as close as Crocodile could ever remember this particular day.]

The moment he consciously opens his eyes again, lucid, he faces a starry sky that cloaked the deep night.

His eyes read the sky.

 _Auriga, Perseus, Camelopardalis, Cassiopeia, Lynx, Ursa minor, Cepheus, Ursa major, Draco, Corona corealis- he’s alive and his back didn’t hurt anymore_.

In a rush, quite shocked he sits up and freezes for a moment as the pain pangs across his backside. His back wasn’t as fully healed as it seemed before. But its not swollen and pulsating either. He touches his forehead. It was significantly cooler than the past few days. The fever was gone or at least had gone down significantly. His vision doesn’t go blurry when he starts looking around, trying to regain his orientation. Nothing looks familiar, and he isn’t sure whether this is because it’s dark or because this is not the place he passed out at.

Someone must’ve moved him. Someone strong enough to carry a tall man like him. And taken at least basic care of his wound and his fever. Which was ridiculous considering that he was on a tiny abandoned island in the middle of the Calm Belt with no one else but his thoughts and misery and - _the fucking flamingo?_

His brain doesn’t compute. That was logically the only possibility and a logical final conclusion but at the same time it was not logical at all and logic was just acting like a bitch right now. Despite being the only other human on this island it was, in every iteration of space and time, impossible that the one that had taken care of him -like, actual medical care- was Donquixote Doflamingo. He’d rather expected waking up somewhere in the afterlife and finding out that the taller man had sliced his head off while he was laying around like carrion. Flamingo would never have passed up this opportunity. So both of these possibilities have less than a zero percent probability. An empty set in sample space.

So the only other logical conclusion is that there was a third person here. He has no idea who, but for sure not another Warlord. That he would’ve found out earlier, because Warlords simply can’t keep quiet about themselves. They always stick out somehow.

A native? Someone stranded a long time ago? Seems unlikely but he’d rather believe that than his other options.

He tries to get up, wanting to find out what happened and thank the mysterious stranger for helping him. When he gets to his feet he realizes that he isn’t quite as healed up as he'd hoped to be. His joints hurt and his balance is still slightly off. He’s in no condition to fight, he realizes, and he’s dangerously vulnerable right now. Out here he’s easy prey and he needs to gather information, to check up if he missed anything important, like _the Marine?_ His breath halts. He nearly forgot. What if- What day is it? 10 days, Kumas note had told him. 10 days before they’d come and get us out of there. Did I miss them? No, can’t be. They’d have looked for me no matter if I was dead or alive. Right? They would’ve for sure. Right. Right.

He feels dreadfully calm. He feels like he just skipped all stages of Disbelief and is left with a somewhat understanding emptiness in his head. His thoughts clear up and he only now he fully grasps how absolutely absurd this entire situation is. He’d laugh or scream or punch something if he could but his body shuts down to only the very basic functions and those don’t include emotions.

“Shit”, he says.

“You sure look like that.”, an amused voice says behind him, “but not as bad as yesterday.”, and Crocodile nearly flinches and quickly turns around and briefly considers not believing in science and logic anymore when he realizes that the person that had indeed taken care of him was no other than the sociopathic Warlord with a puffy feathered coat and a grin so wide you could build a railway on it.

Crocodile never had a knack for arts and he probably never will, but he’s pretty sure he fully grasped the concept of surrealism.

Day 9.

“You care to explain why?”

“Why, adverb, meaning ‘for what?’ or ‘for what reason?’, used to look for a cause or a purp-“

“ _Why_ didn’t you k-“

“Why didn’t I kill you right away? You need to ask specific questions for specific answers, Croco-man.”

“Answer.”

“Oh? Is this how you treat all your saviors? Rude.”

“Stop pissing me off. You think I’d believe one second you did it because of purity of heart? Out with it.”

“How about a simple ‘thank you’? I can define that for you too if you need it.”

“Doflamingo.”

“Crocodile.”

“You want me dead. I know it. You know it. Since last week even the World Government knows it. Why pass up the opportunity?”

“Who says my opportunity is over? I could strike at any moment and you wouldn’t be able to do anything. You’re no opponent for me like this and you know it.”

“So you’re still playing your stupid superiority game? Hoping that I’d beg you not to do it, not to kill me when the Marines are about to come? Getting off on the idea that someone’s under your oh-so-gracious mercy?”

“Well if you say it like that, it sound much less entertaining than it actually happens to be. I would know.”

“You are aware that you won’t get a satisfied ending with this, right? Contrary to your belief I actually do not care much about dying or torture. You might get satisfaction from killing me since you’re one cruel bastard but you know as much as I do, that the begging you’re dreaming of wont ever happen.”

The taller man stretches out, seemingly tired of the conversation.

“Haah- Crocodile, Croco-man…You deaf? I thought this would be obvious. I told you why I didn’t do it and having power over you like this is just merely a unexpected but not unwelcome side-effect of the situation we happen to be in.”

“…I don’t- what are you going on about?”

“ _You’re no opponent for me like this and you know it_.”

Silence.

“…So you decided you won’t kill me _because it wouldn’t be fair?_ That is bull-“

“ _No,_ Idiot. I didn’t kill you right here, right now because I thought it would be boring. Boring. You can give me more than just dying away on some tropical rock due to sickness. I’m honestly disappointed you even got sick. Weak.”

“So in the end you still did it for your entertainment? Thought so. I still won’t thank you.”

-

“Croco-man”

A grunt.

“Say, would you have killed me if our situation was reversed?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, really?”

“Yes.”

“And now that you know my reasoning for why I haven’t killed you yet?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“I’d still kill you.”

Silence. A searching look scans Crocodiles face through crimson lenses.

“You’re not lying. That’s cold, Croco-bastard. I’m impressed.”

A grunt.

“You’d really do it, would you? Stab your goddamn hook through my back and watch me bleed out while shaking with fever and fighting for consciousness. Watch me die without having had any chance of defense.” A quiet chuckle. “And you called _me_ cruel before.”

“It’s not.”

“What?”

“It’s not cruel.”

“Oh, so you wanna convince me now that out of the both of us _you’re_ the merciful one? I don’t think your method of elimination classifies as that. But how would I know- I’ve been charged for stuff that I never thought of being cruel-“

“It’s just a death.”

Doflamingo turns his head towards him, intrigued.

“It has nothing to do with being ‘merciful’ or ‘cruel’. Those are terms that try to create meaning where there is none. It’s just a convenient death. Another heart that could be a problem someday simply stops beating. A lump of cells not sending an autogenerated electrical signal anymore. Nothing deep behind it.”

Words spoken with calm self-evidence. Face collected, not a single crack of madness or cold cruelty to be seen. It was said the exact same way someone would point out the that the sun was shining. A chill ran down Doflamingos spine.

He didn’t say anything more though.

Day 10.

Somewhere around noon, a ship appeared on the horizon. Quite big, a special ship with its entire hull made out of sea stone. The Marine flag hung limply towards gravity and the tuckering of a motor came closer. The Marines probably weren’t happy about having to waste their resources on Warlords like them. If they hadn’t such a high position they would’ve left them there to rot. Doflamingo and Crocodile stood near shore, waiting for the boat to arrive. They hadn’t spoken since their last conversation yesterday but after they exchanged words last time, the silence had somewhat become comfortable. Less threatening, though there was still some tension left between them. Past sticks hard.

They got on board. The Vice Admiral muttered, when he thought the Warlords couldn’t hear him something along the lines of “I rather expected to find their bodies than them cooperating.” Crocodile was lead to the medical room to finally receive actual treatment and check-up. Now he's sitting there while a scrawny board doc takes hasty notes on his clipboard, pressing his pen way too hard onto the paper. “This is fully infected and the wound needs to washed out with a Sodium Chloride-solution and then needs to be sewn.” The board doc tells him suddenly. Crocodile just nods. His head pulsates and honestly he’s glad this disastrous experience is finally over. And he’s still breathing. He was well aware that the flamingo could’ve changed his mind any second and end him in an instant. He asks for cigars. The doc throws him a disapproving look and heads out of the room. The assistant gives him an apologetic glance before telling him to check the bureau storage rooms on the upper deck.

Ten minutes the doc is back, everything prepared for his treatment. “This wont feel too pleasant”, he warns, “do you want any kind of painkillers or sedatives?”. “No”, Crocodile answers and undergoes his entire procedure fully conscious. He takes it in, soaks it up, every single sting, burn, flare of pain. He tries to register the nerves in his body, where the pain comes from and were those signals are transported to. He remembers every muscle that spasms under the dripping NaCl-solution. He feels every bone whose surface was scratched and he counts the stitches on his back when the needle threaded through his skin. 36 stitches. Larger than he'd imagined it would be. “Don’t move too much around, otherwise it’ll break open again. If it gets disinfected regularly nothing should halt the healing process.”, the doc tells him, “but it’s important you do that.” He looks at him in a way that says ‘no exceptions for you warlords in that regard’.

He finds himself later on the upper deck, his left pocket stuffed with two packs of cigars in _Parejo_ -shape, type _Panatella_ , Metric length 15 centimetres, metric width 15 millimetres. Not the stuff he usually smokes. But he takes what he gets at this point.

On deck, he notices the wind, the clouds, the weather moving. They left the Calm Belt a few minutes ago and a few Marines are opening the sails to replace the noisy tuckering of the motor. The wind blows through his dishevelled hair and while he usually puts a lot of care into appearance, he can’t bring himself to care just right now. Smoke blows away from the rail onto the open ocean and tired eyes follow the twists and curls until they dissipate into thin air. There’s roughly 23 minutes of daylight left. He closes his eyes and starts counting seconds.

_1, 2, 3 , 4 , 5 , 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 , 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 168, 169, 170, […]_

_[…]1300, 1301, 1302, 1303, 1304, 1305, 1306, 1307, 1308 ,1309, 1310, 1311, 1312, 1313, 1314, 1315, 1316, 1317, 1318, ,1320, 1321, 1322, 1323, 1324, 1325, 1326, 1327, 1328, 1329, 1330, 1331, 1332, 1333, 1334, 1335, 1336, 1337, 1338, 1339, 1340, 1341, 1342, 1343, 1344, 1345, 1346, 1347, 1348, 1349, 1350, 1351, 1352, 1353, 1354, 1355, 1356, 1357, 1358, 1359, 1360, 1361, 1362, 1363, 1364, 1365, 1366, 1367, 1368, 1369, 1370, 1371, 1372, 1373, 1374, 1375, 1376, 1377, 1378, 1379, 1380._

His cigar gets plucked out of his fingers. He opens his eyes, distraught that the world has gone dark and eyes the silhouette next to him. He sees the reflected, distorted starlight bouncing of a pair of red lens glasses. The tall Warlord takes a deep inhale of the nearly burned down cigar, exhales all of it at once and sticks his tongue out. “Tastes disgusting.”, he judges.

Crocodile raises his eyebrows, still not caught on the scurrility of the situation. “I didn’t expect you to have taste and I still don’t.”

The look he gets is, he assumes, one of indignation but he can’t tell because his eyes haven’t adjusted yet. They fall silent and Crocodile only now realizes how utterly absurd this is. The air between them tenses in a way where he can feel it. They shouldn’t stand next to each other in a calm and civil manner, sharing a fucking cigar while watching the moonless sky. They should go after each other’s throats, _he_ should go after his throat and it’s not like he’s ever forgiven him for killing his sub-officer just like that all these years ago for no reason but to create havoc. No he didn’t. And he can still feel anger about it, right now it starts clawing in the pit of his stomach. But there’s also the other part in him that grew older and says…something he doesn’t quite understand yet. But it’s there and it holds him back from mindlessly going after Doflamingo. It’s his injuries, he concludes. I’m not going after him because I’m still not on top of my game. Why else would I just stand here and not ram my hook through his stomach until he-

“His name was Castor,” the taller man suddenly says, interrupting Crocodiles thoughts.

“..What?”

“Castor.”

It takes him a moment.

“The crewmate we-?” “Yes.”

Neurons are rapidly firing signals in his brain. The name rings more than one bell in his brain. They are trying to calculate the likeliness, the probability, the sheer amount of madness of coincidence that was implied within this one name. The probability he gets is not very convincing. In fact, it’s so low that a disbelieving chuckle leaves his lips.

“You do realize that I do not take anything that goes against my family lightly, do you? Especially slaughter. Do you think laughing this away in front of me will let you get away from me, Croco-Bastard?”

“No. But I think that’s all I can come up with, when I realized how fate strung these particular events. And I firmly believe that fate is nothing more than a faulty invention from people that are too lazy to think about causality.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“About Pollux.”

“..what?

“Pollux.”

It takes the other man a moment.

“The crewmate I-?” “Yes.”

Crocodile swears he can pinpoint the exact moment the flamingo realizes by hearing all the gears in his brain click.

The night sky is glowing above them as they cast their gaze up.

> #### Gemini (Constellation)
> 
> ####  _Latin, meaning ‘Twins,’_ / _ˈdʒɛmɪnaɪ/_

Located in the Northern celestial Hemisphere, one of the 88 recognized modern constellations.

Visible at latitudes between +90° and −60°.  
Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of February. The constellation contains 85 stars of naked eye visibility. The brightest star in Gemini is Pollux, and the second-brightest is Castor.

Castor and Pollux are the two "heavenly twin" stars and the head stars within the constellation. The stars, however, are quite different in detail.

 **Castor** and **Pollux** were twin half-brothers in mythology, known together as the Dioscuri.

In Latin the twins are also known as the **Gemini** (literally "twins") or Castores. Pollux asked the gods to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo’s fire.

* * *

***Disclaimer: Please proceed with caution. Unreliable Narrator and omission ahead.**

Crocodile(left):

Doflamingo(right):

“Brothers, huh? Twins, even. They didn't look too alike, though. The world sure is fucking small sometimes.”

“I don’t know whether this worsens what we did or excuses it.”

“I thought you didn’t care about these sort of things. Excuses and sentiments for the dead. Treating death like death and such.”

“I do not. I can however acknowledge that even for my unfaithful beliefs this is a rather astounding coincidence and I wont lie and say it does not shake my beliefs by the slightest bit.”

“As unlikely as it is, I agree with you on this one.”

-330 seconds of silence-

“Castor was part of our family. My family consists out of world misfits that have no one else and nowhere else to be. He was one of those people and he fit right in. But he’d always insisted that one day, his older brother Pollux would come find him and he’d join our ranks. He was…quite passionate about it and he disliked when someone brushed it off as some kind of delusion or a joke. We told him that we were his family, his brothers and sisters now, and he accepted us as such. When he joined, he was alone. We’d always put it aside as him being confused about his past or him having lost his brother a long time ago. We stopped bringing him up and after a while we forgot about it.”

-20 seconds of silence-

“I killed Pollux before he joined. I took and gave him family. How inappropriately fitting.”

_quietly_ “It’s a brother thing, probably.”

“What?”

“Nothing”

-120 seconds of silence-

“He was supposed to prepare for our Grand Line departure while I was gone watching Rogers execution. Pollux was the second member to ever join my crew. He was my sub-officer, less versed in combat but he had exceptional navigational skills. He was also the first crewmember I ever had to see dying in my crew.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Keep it. You’re not.”

“Right.”

“He joined because he supported my decisions. But he also told me he joined because he was looking for someone and travelling the sea was the easiest way to get around. Guess who?

“Monkey D. Garp?”

“Very funny.”

-75 seconds of silence-

“Did you know?”

“I mean did you know it was Castor you killed? As…revenge? I’d even understand that. The eye for an eye kind of thing. Brother for a brother.”

-15 seconds of silence-

“No. No I didn’t know. It was not a brother for a brother kind of thing. Although I have to admit, as little as I believe in sentimental murder nowadays - it was a crewmate for a crewmate kind of thing. I’d have preferred your head, though. But I took whoever I could get at this time.”

“Looking back I might have closed one perfect loop of revenge there.”

“I mean, knowing that they’re dead together gives me the greatest sense of _something_ out there that might have aligned events like this.”

“Divine justice?”

“Hm. Sounds less impressive when you name it.”

“Cold as ever I see.”

-240 seconds of silence-

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I’d say it sure has it’s ro-“

“You don’t even know what I wanted to ask?”

“ _You need to ask specific questions for specific answers, Flamingo-man_.”

“You know for someone that doesn’t give a damn about sentiments you sure know how to hold onto things like a tick.”

“I’m observant. This includes pointing out openings in peoples defence.”

“An annoying quality to have.”

“Good.”

“If you continue like this I’ll add ‘has no self-preservation’ to your list.”

“Is that a threat?”

“ 'Observe' and find out.”

-20 seconds of silence-

“So are you going to answer my question?”

“I might if-“

“…”

“If what?”

“If you ask it at some point.”

“You’re such a pain I swear-“

-5 seconds of silence-

“…Why the disbelief in divinity, I mean.”

“Fate, Luck, Heavenly Justice and whatever other names it has. Where does your rejection for these concepts come from?”

“Let me ask you back. Why accept these concepts, when they don’t prove anything in a measurable way? There’s much more reliable ways of believing in something out here. People throwing out their beliefs onto the sea without any backing behind them are “destined” to drown for their entitlement in believing fate favours them.”

“You weren’t always like this, though, am I right?”

“What, you think you know me?”

“I know you went looking for the One Piece as well. Not something someone without any belief would be looking for.”

“… I returned without it.”

“So you gave up?”

“I learned from experience.”

“Sure. And what ‘did you learn from the experience’ tonight?”

“That you’re a nosy piece of shit.”

-10 seconds of silence-

“…And that it’s best to let go of this. Of the twins.”

“Because of fate?”

“Because my experienced brain tells me that chasing after revenge for 12 years gets kind of repetitive at some point.”

“Because of fate.”

“If it helps you sleep at night.”

None of them even thought of going to sleep then. Whether it was the protection of the dark night sky, the soft rhythmic sounds of waves rolling against the ship or the feeling of being watched by _Gemini_ shining brightly above their heads, none of them wanted to leave the conversation. Just for a few hours something like a parallel universe, secluded from their worlds rules, seemed to have taken overhand and allowed memories to happen that they thought only dreams could create. And while the clock was tirelessly ticking towards dawn, the dark hours on board felt as eternal as the world inside a snow globe, but instead of snow the only moving thing were the endless waters surrounding them.

The only thing that flowed smoother than the ocean were the words they exchanged.

This illusion disappeared once the first ray of sunlight danced across the ocean, it’s light reflecting thousand fold and exposing the two figures on the deck that had hid in the darkness of night. The conversation broke. Not hidden by darkness anymore Crocodile and Doflamingo retreated back into the ships interior, into their respective rooms, not acknowledging the presence of the other. Both knew the rules. They were simple enough.

It didn’t happen.

* * *

**Epilogue.**

And when they left the ship they went opposite ways. No looks, no words were exchanged when they turned away from the other, fleeing from the ship that had suddenly felt too cramped for both of them to stay even close to it. When Doflamingo turned left, Crocodile turned right and the distance between the two men opened like a giant ravine between them, winding and bottomless. They travelled away from each other. More and more miles of distance could be counted between the two. And when they both finally came to a halt, they were standing on the opposite sides of the earth.

It was the first time in a while Crocodile looked back.

There was a brief moment, during his journey, where he’d feared that a direct distance of 12’742 kilometres wouldn’t be enough for his mind to find peace.

And he felt tension slip from his shoulders when his gaze wandered across the wide, dry savanna, the plain dunes in the distance and the sea far away. Shivers ran down his spine when he realized in awe how small he seemed to be in comparison to the world he could see and how empty and devoid of people it could be. He felt quiet relief when he realized he was all by himself again. All alone, as he should be.

The earth keeps turning, unfazed.

_I thought I'd walked a thousand miles_   
_But it was all inside my head_

_[…]_

**_D.C. al Coda_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second one done, third one is already in the works. I’m struggling a little because this has slipped a little further than I originally intended to. (I planned a max. of 5000 words on the entire thing and I’m proud to say I fucking failed.)
> 
> But I also got over my crippling insecurity of posting something online and the fact that I did it is a small victory for me. So I’m still somewhat happy with it.
> 
> I am not a native speaker so if you see something that doesn’t work, be it grammatically or the imagery a I try to show, feel free to point it out or suggest an alternative solution. I’m happy to learn.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I hope I haven’t lost you yet.


	3. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In the end,**
> 
> **_grief_**
> 
> **and**
> 
> **_guilt_**
> 
> **are still dear brothers**
> 
> **and they're closer than you think.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one  
> last  
> long  
> introspection
> 
> Thank you for being here

_Now you may ask yourself, if you even remember, wasn’t this supposed to be the worst memory between us? Denatonium saccharide and whatnot? Why set up something so unnecessarily complicated and pointless when it leads to two grown men having a decent conversation for once?_

_And I’d agree with you, looking at this from the outside. I’d absolutely do. Why dramatize two men talking if your name’s not Shakespeare? And thou art in the right._

_But the real tragedies happen on the inside. Within approximately 100 billion cells, if you take the average human. Within about 86 billion neurons and many more neuroglia, and all of them are interconnected and formed into as many as a 1000 trillion synapses that frizzle with electricity and neurotransmitters. In this brooding concoction of chemicals and consciousness lies the potential of misery._

_You see, ‘guilt’ or the sentiment of ‘feeling guilty’ is something very disgusting. It’s something that can constantly be with you like the blood in your veins, always running in the circles that we call a system. It might have a shape and it might not but what it does is, it shapes you. And what can you do? Bleed it out? No. There’s a kind of guilt that will never let you rest. And it won’t care whether you’re actually at fault or not. Because it’s inside you and it doesn’t care if you pretend it’s not there. Because it’s always there. It’s in your Aorta, in your Vena Cava Inferior, in your capillaries feeding your brain with guilt instead of oxygen. In some cases, you die with it._

_But in worse cases, you live with it._

_And thus concludes my story:_

[…]

My feet were almost where I started off  
And I couldn't tell you why I'd bled

[…]

If the world was this easy to handle, he’d never have to remember all of this.

If the world was easy to understand, he’d written a book about numbers instead.

If the world was gentle, he’d never have to fight his own memories that tried to stab his back.

And for one world, this might apply. But the alternate reality in his head turns all the laws of nature around, tampers with gravity and favours loss of entropy. It’s so hard to understand, it’s a language that he still can’t speak today although he made an effort to learn dead tongues from everywhere. And while it’s hard to understand yourself, it’s even harder _trying_ to do so. Because your brain’s a construction site and it builds walls and obstacles along your way. It constantly changes shapes to trick you and from one day to the next you don’t recognize the street you’re standing on anymore and you’re hurt about it, because these are _your_ streets, _your_ constructions and they fail you and you feel so, _so_ weak.

So he looked for an escape elsewhere. And he found it. In books, in words, letters, lines and circles, that created meaning. In numbers and logic where conclusions were solid building blocks and the constructions he formed with them were not falling apart by a gust of doubt and burying him. They had become his weapons and his shields- against both worlds he was fighting.

And there is nothing wrong with that either. Everyone that attempts to bite off more than they can chew in this world would eventually succumb to this fight. It’s just that people have different ways of fighting. Some fight hard but lose earlier than others, some are crushed by it instantly and the world continues turning in its circles, steady and even, unfazed by the uncountable amount of cells firing signals against each other.

Crocodile was good at it, brilliant even, and he knew it. He had built up a functional routine to maintain trauma and sentiments like they were caged pets in a zoo and he fed them just enough attention and kept just a close enough eye on them so they wouldn’t dig a hole through the ground and escape and go loose, tearing down all the orderly shelves his brain had constructed. He treated his thoughts like lines written in a book and their information like facts picked up from a table. A logical system. He didn’t get this far because he was weak-willed. Only the strong survived in a world that was as haunted with a need for blood spilled as theirs.

He was a functional fucking machine, perfectly oiled and running faster than most could. His brain had extra gears he built himself and they were racing a hundred miles per hour, additional synapses and more vesicles in his axons, he had conditioned himself to release the required neurotransmitters whenever the situation required them, _he was in control._ It was hard work to maintain every hour, every _day_ , but the clarity he got in return was damn rewarding. And he was proud of it.

_“How do you do that all the time?”_

_“Do what?”_

_“Exist like you’re hewn out of marble, polished.”_

So where did it go wrong?

Routines, even the most meticulous ones, do have a weakness. When a thousand gears are turning in unison, a thousand tubes running and pumping _in_ _prestissimo_ , always working in a frenzy and isolated from the outside, they won’t know what to do if something gets in and clogs the system. Be it thoughts, words, emotions- it staggers and halts in confusion, before remembering that it cannot stop running, it’s not allowed to and it pushes through the obstructions and all these delicate gears and tubes shatter into pieces. But they’re still spinning and turning and that’s all that matters in this moment. That’s all that matters.

_for a moment, the distance between them reaches 0._

_that one point_

_bears the weight of a black hole_

_because it’s not an empty set_

_any longer_

So, when he’d allowed himself to lose control just a tiny bit, just these few hours during a night that had no meaning he wasn’t even fully aware of the damage he’d caused.

_“Why did you to this?”_

_“To prove that lightning can strike during clear skies too.”_

A realization that hit hard, when he was supposed to return to normal functionality. What had been first nature to him was nothing more but a creaking, crying pile of dysfunction and he was utterly gobsmacked by it. Surprised by how little it had taken – quiet words, soft gestures, a bit of ~~oscula~~ \- - to take his careful constructs apart. And he forced himself to study the remnants of his walls that he thought impenetrable. To analyse where the faults hid, where his foundations had cracked and why he ultimately failed to remain untouchable. He needed to rebuild them, after all, and quickly. Every stitch on his back reminded him how vulnerable he was. No one could find out. He was a man with many enemies. He had built an image of himself and he had appearances to keep up. It was his shield against the world. It was his shield against his disillusioned self that was rotting inside of him, barely breathing anymore.

_“Did your ‘attempt to prove’ turn out valid?”_

_“You tell me, Crocodile. I’m one with myself. My world, my rules._

_I was trying to prove it to **you**.”_

He didn’t have much time to regain composure. So he did the most logical thing he could do. He folded his memories into a tiny package and hid it on the highest shelf in his brain. Let dust settle over it, until the package lost its shape and bared no resemblance to its original state anymore. He forgot. He moved on.

**Somewhere in the New World, Years later, present**.

An extraction of the ‘World Economic News’. February, week 2, Special Issue

# THE HEAVENLY DEMON IS DEAD!

###  **Successful execution may put an end to vocal repercussions of the MARINEFORD-execution**

_It is a much needed and historic win for the Marines that happened today on the Center Plaza of Marineford. After the stage was ready at 12:50 p.m. the sentenced criminal was brought to the execution site without any interventions. All Vice-Admirals were present and even Fleet Admiral Sakazuki showed his presence at the scaffold. After the huge miscalculation in security that was the Marineford spectacle, the safety standards were overworked once more and properly adapted for this S-Class criminal execution. This has in many ways improved and regained the trust of many citizen, that were concerned for their safety after the infamous Impel Down breakout._

_Reports from all over the world describe an enthusiastic crowd within the cities where a live broadcast took place. Especially Dressrosa, a country with a long and dark history because of the cruelties caused by the Donquixote Crew, had raging street festivals going on. Rumours even insinuate that there is discussion of making the execution date of Donquixote Doflamingo an official holiday. (For more on that: p.9) Security was provided by the Marine. […]_

_[…] At point 1:00 p.m. the headsmen entered the stage. There was another special exception specifically made for this execution that was unknown until shortly before the event. The law of execution states that under normal circumstances the convict is allowed 120 seconds before death to speak his last words. In this case however the Marine in accordance with the World Government took away this right, due to sensitive knowledge the former Warlord was apparently aware of. This did raise dome eyebrows and a few politic figureheads pointed out the ethical flaws and hypocrisy of the Government to do so. The Government insisted that ‘it was for peoples safety’ and ‘to prevent a piracy crisis as Gold Roger or Whitebeards death had caused at the time.’ Protests quickly died down after this statement was issued, but the question still remains: What more secrets did Donquixote Doflamingo hide? […]_

_[…]Under complete silence his head was cut of in a clean motion. Right after the head hit the scaffold, an enormous wave of triumph swept across Marineford, as the attending soldiers and admirals celebrated the execution of one of the most notorious criminals of this time. The infectious joy quickly spread to the public viewings and from there on to the rest of the world. To read more about the various reactions worldwide go to p.9. There is also a rising demand to execute the other members of the Donquixote crew, however the World Government did not comment on this up to this point. For more info about the Donquixote Crew, p.8[…]_

_[…] …and we truly can come to the conclusion that this man was a morally corrupt and violent monster and a real threat to the integrity of humanity.[…]_

_For more information about the execution, p.3_

_For more information about criminal Donquixote Doflamingo, p.5_

_For more information about Dressrosan history, p.10 […]_

Crocodile stares at the article, disgusted. He can’t tell what infuriates him more. The hypocrisy of the citizen, celebrating death like that and then resuming to crying and cursing criminals when one of their loved ones is killed. They are cowards, all of them. The hypocrisy of the papers claiming themselves to be a neutral news source when all of these vile journalists got off on all the brutal stories they could claw with their greedy fingers. The hypocrisy of the World Government, denying a dying man’s last words so they could keep the rancid secrets he knew under tight wraps. His own hypocrisy, being all angry about the situation but not having done anything to change it. He bites down on his cigar hard. It snaps.

_“Why are you touching the world_

_like nothing is real under your fingers_

_until it bled because of you?”,_

_Doflamingo says_

_and smiles into the hand_

_that wipes the blood off his lips._

  
  


[…]

And I'm not surprised by what was said  
But it still hit me all the same

[…]

INTERMISSION ?

SCENE?

SIR CROCODILE still sits in his BUREAU, a CIGAR is in his mouth. It is dark. On the DESK is a PENHOLDER, a VIDEO TRANSMISSION SNAIL, a full ASHTRAY and a PACK OF CIGARS, opened. He holds an edition of the newest NEWSPAPER in his hand. He looks at the front page. It shrivels and is reduced to a small PILE OF SAND on his DESK.

SIR CROCODILE presses the still glowing CIGAR into the PILE OF SAND.

SIR CROCODILE stands up and goes to the WINDOW.

There’s a knock at the DOOR.

SIR CROCODILE: Yes?

The DOOR opens. DAZ BONES enters the scene, wearing a tight BLACK SUIT. He has a SHEET OF PAPER in his hands. He steps exactly ONE STEP into the room, then straightens his back and waits for his permission to speak.

SIR CROCODILE: What is it? Hurry up.

DAZ BONES: Four of five deliveries have just arrived. One is stuck at Dressrosa due to storm warnings. It will arrive a few days later. The merchant offered to lower the prices to make up for the delay. You’ll have to sign this contract.

He lifts the SHEET.

SIR CROCODILE: I see. Anything else?

DAZ BONES: …

He fidgets.

SIR CROCODILE (annoyed): What?

DAZ BONES:… A call came in before. One of the secretaries took it. It was a meeting request by Donquixote Family member Sugar.

SIR CROCODILE freezes, then turns around.

SIR CROCODILE (to himself): The kid…?

SIR CROCODILE (to DAZ): What did she want from us?

DAZ BONES: She did not elaborate. She said she’d only talk to you directly. Do you… know her personally, Boss?

SIR CROCODILE (thoughtful): Not really. I know what she looks like, but I don’t understand why _a child_ from the _Donquixote Crew_ has any business with us. With me. We never talked. She wanted a meeting?

DAZ BONES: As I said she refused to elaborate. I assume you will call her back?

SIR CROCODILE: …I suppose.

DAZ BONES: Should I bring up the SNAIL?

SIR CROCODILE thinks for a moment, then turns back to the window.

SIR CROCODILE: No. No, I’ll get it later. Put the contract on my table. You are dismissed.

DAZ BONES is about to put the SHEET onto the table, notices the GLOWING PILE OF ASH and stops.

DAZ BONES: …Boss. Your table is about to go up in flames.

SIR CROCODILE (still looking out the window, distracted): I’ll sign it later then. Take it down with you.

DAZ BONES (confused): Uh…Very well. Should I …uh, throw out the ashes?

DAZ BONES grows visibly more confused when SIR CROCODILE doesn’t respond. After a minute, he quietly decides to leave. He reaches the DOOR and opens it.

SIR CROCODILE suddenly turns around, making DAZ BONES standing up straighter.

SIR CROCODILE: No. Tell the workers we’re leaving. Get a ship ready. We’re abandoning this place.

DAZ BONES (confused): Where do we go?

SIR CROCODILE: Wherever Sugar proposes to meet. Now go.

DAZ BONES stares blankly for a moment, then heads out the DOOR. When he is out, he shakes his head in a confused manner.

DAZ BONES: I don’t get him. I really don’t.

DAZ BONES exits the STAGE.

SIR CROCODILE turns back to the WINDOW, looking outside one last time, expression blank. Behind him, the GLOWING PILE OF ASH starts burning. A flame quickly lights the DESK on fire.

SIR CROCODILE goes to his DESK, grabs the VIDEO TRANSMISSION SNAIL and the PACK OF CIGARS. He heads out of the ROOM, not closing the DOOR and not looking back.

SIR CROCODILE leaves the STAGE FOR GOOD.

The ENTIRE ROOM succumbs to the FIRE. So does the STAGE.

The CURTAIN burns down.

INTERMISSION ? END.

[…]  
Just because you see the storm  
It doesn't mean you're ready for the rain

[…]

Dressrosa, she says, is the _most_ _stupidest_ place to meet up, especially for her. And that he’s dumb for even considering it. And that she’s a young lady and that her safety has the utmost priority. Crocodile, taken aback by the rudeness of the brat, stays quiet for a moment, staring at the sulking expression of the Den Den Mushi in front of him. Then he asks her to propose a better place and thinks _the brat has guts._ There weren’t many people that talked to him like that these days and after a moment he realizes whom the young girl has learned from. _Of course._

She suggests another Kingdom , one of which Crocodile has never heard of and when he asks her where he has to go she says: “It’s in the North Blue.” He inhales a little too sharp and the smoke irritates his lungs. He holds back a cough. “The _North Blue_? I’m in the New World right now, I have a lot to maintain here and the journey out of the Line will take weeks. No.” The Den Den Mushi starts sulking again. “No”, he says again, “No way in hell.” “ _Please,_ Mr. Crocodile”, she whines, “I’m a child, how do you expect me to get to the New World?”

“Sir”.

“What?”

“It’s _Sir_ Crocodile. Not Mister.”

“I don’t care! Get here somehow!”

“Wh-“, Crocodile stops. He needs to stay calm and not get aggravated by this…brat. He sighs internally. He’s not very good with children. How would he be when he’s dealing with illegal activities and criminals every single day? “Look”, he says as patiently as he can, “is it necessary to meet? Can’t you just tell me what you need and we’ll send it to you, deal?” The line stays quiet. “Hello?”

“I’m not gonna tell you over the line.”

Crocodile groans. His patience has run out. Not that he had much to begin with. He’s wasted enough time with a child already and although he was and still is intrigued by whatever a former Donquixote member wanted from him, there’s more important business he has to attend to. He’ll attempt again when he has time to spare and isn’t as strong on edge as he’s right now. “Alright. Enough child’s play. I’ll get back to you.”, he says and cuts the connection. Then he continues his calculation for the armament costs for his underground expansion plans.

He, however, grossly underestimates the persistence of an angry child that didn’t get what it wanted.

The Den Den Mushi rings. And rings. And it continues to do so. The snail eyes him slightly confused seemingly asking what the hell he’s waiting for. Five minutes go by and Crocodile is just about to _murder_ the snail, but the he decides to just lock it in his drawer. He’ll need it to get back to her. _Later_. The wood his desk is made out of is thick enough that the ringing wouldn’t be heard.

He continues working. Numbers are flowing through his brain, occupying his mind and attention and distract him enough to forget about everything that happened and gnawed on his sanity the past few ~~years~~ days. He gets about a solid hour of work done.

Then the snail in his desk starts fucking yelling and he drops his fountain pen, leaving droplets of ink and a large black smudge on his calculations. His desk might have supressed the constant ringing but it sure can’t contain a snail wailing for its live. He sits there for a moment, shell-shocked, and then it suddenly dawns on him. The emergency function. Designed to be loud enough to wake a goddamn cemetery. He angrily unlocks the drawer and gets the snail out and- _god that thing is LOUD-_ and someone’s knocking at his door. “Sir? Is everything alright?”, he hears the worried voice of his secretary whose office is right outside his bureau, “Is this an actual emergency? Do I need to get help?” “No.”, he answers fiercely , “No emergency. I have it under control. Get back to work.” Then he grabs the receiver.

“What?”, he barks.

“Oh, you’re back!”, Sugar exclaims with a light, innocent tone in her voice as if she hadn’t just plagued him for the entire past hour. Then she says much more solemn: “Look, I’m sorry for the emergency call. But I really want so meet you and I don’t know…”, she stops briefly thinking about her next words carefully. “I don’t know how much longer I can hide.” She finishes quietly.

Crocodile picks on her tone immediately: “You’re being searched for? By the Marine?” “Yes. They want to stuff me into Impel Down and once they get me, they won’t let me out that easily.” Her tone is hard and cold and does not fit the high pitch of a young girl. Crocodile frowns. “The World Government does vile things but would they really imprison a child? If that reached the public, they would lose their tainted reputation for good. Then again-“, he says, remembering Mariejois, “ they use children as slaves so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Looking at the Den Den Mushi, he can see it hesitate for a moment. Then Sugar says: “They won’t even think about sparing me for a bit. They didn’t the first time they got me. After Dressrosa fell I got captured along with my brothers and sisters. I managed to escape because I could use my looks to act my way out of it by crying at some unknowing Marines that I’d lost my mother on Dressrosa and sneaked away to start a new life. I got deported back there immediately, of course and shoved onto some random family that was willing to take care of me. From there, I planned my escape to the North Blue to look for a way to free my family. I didn’t… expect to run out of time. For the World Government and the Marine to act that quickly, I mean.” The snail has a slightly pained expression when it stops.

Crocodile starts pinpointing the situation together. First of all – “You’re no child, are you?”. She definitely isn’t. They way she’d dropped her act told him that this might’ve been more serious that he thought.

“No, I am not.”, she answers honestly, “I’m 22. I ate the Hobi Hobi no mi and it halted my aging process at age 10. And I’m only telling you all of this because I have no other choice.”

“The Marines know?”

“Only the ones that were responsible for hunting _us_ specifically during our pirate times. And because me and my sister joined later, they didn’t know me too well. The Vice-Admirals and Admirals do know, though and that’s what makes it difficult to hide.”

“I see. So, you are asking me for what? Protection? A plan to get your ‘family’ out of Impel Down? I broke out of there once already and I do not plan to get back in there anytime soon. I also do not want any Admirals breathing down my neck. I don’t know if you forgot, but I’m a wanted man too. The warlords don’t exist anymore.”

“I know that!”, the snail exclaims and it sounds more childish than she probably intended it to be. “But what other choice do I have than to trust you?!”

Something about that statement makes him stop for a moment and prevents him from telling her off. “What do you mean?”, he asks cautiously. If he’d ever, _ever_ set any kind of deal or favour with the Donquixote Crew he would know. Because he never did. “You’re a pirate too, are you not?”, she says firmly. “Someone like me rather turns to other pirates for help than for any other organization. ‘If you’re a pirate you can’t trust anyone and if you have to, it better be a bird of your feather.’ That’s what the young master always told us.”

Crocodile takes another draw from his cigar, touching his forehead. He’s not too sure what to do right now and he hates when this happens. He hates not being completely under control from all his decisions and he hates wavering because it wastes time. “I assume”, he looks at the smudged papers and bills on his desk, “you don’t have anything to pay for your wishes. Am I right?” The snail grits its teeth. “I… I don’t have too much to give.”, she presses out, “But I didn’t call sans having anything to offer you.”

“And that would be?”

“Money”, she says vaguely.

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“If you don’t tell the deal is dead immediately. _How much?_ ”

“…300’000 beri.” The answer sounds defeated.

“That’s not a lot. And that’s certainly not enough for me to get out of the Grand Line and leave all my businesses behind.”

When Sugar speaks up again, her voice is tense: “I know it’s not much. But-I mean-… Is the- Is there anything else you could need from us? Whatever I can find for you, I’ll try to get it. It’s not like…we have much use for it anymore.”

He thinks for a moment. If he’s completely honest he doesn’t feel very honourable taking advantage of Sugars situation like this. Though he knows now she’s not really a child, capable of taking care of herself and probably dangerous as well and he’s also aware that he’s a pirate and _pirates don’t care about others if they haven’t taken care of themselves._ It’s like Sugar- no, _Doflamingo_ apparently, had stated.

_If you’re a pirate you can’t trust anyone and if you have to, it better be a bird of your feather._

If he had to name the feeling he had about taking away their legacy, it would be betrayal. Like going behind their backs, robbing the grave of a crew rotting in Impel Down and their captain rotting six feet under. But he doesn’t _have to_ name the feeling and therefore only feels a weird knot in his gut, that bothers him for a minute before he decides to ignore it.

He’s kind of a selfish bastard too and he wouldn’t be the cunning monster he is if he wouldn’t take this opportunity.

“Your businesses.”, he says.

“What?”, Sugar asks, confused.

“I want your business connections. You all were active in the Underworld, weren’t you? If you don’t have the money to pay me with, you’ll have to pay with information.”

“We- we were, that’s true”, Sugar says carefully, ”but I never really had anything to do with it.”

Crocodile frowns. “So you don’t have any information?”

The young girl seems to think hard, judging by the expression on the snail. Crocodile can see the slight desperation judging the way the snail rapidly looks from left to right, as if searching for something.

“There’s papers,” she suddenly says, “lots of them too. I’m in one of the young masters secret hideouts and he had some workrooms there. I’m sure some of these hold valuable information, as the Marines never knew anything of these hideouts. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“How do I know that they have any value for me? You had nothing to do with all the deals, why should I believe you?”

“Uhm… How about I read some of the papers out to you and you can then deem whether the information has worth to you or not? There are staples of papers here by the way, so if it’s truly valuable information coming here would be worth for you too. I can-“

“Good.”, he interrupts. “Start.”

He hears the rustling of paper and Sugar starts reading names, dates, purchases, locations, numbers, banking ID’s and much more.

After three and a half minutes he tells her to stop.

“So?” she asks. She tries to supress it but Crocodile hears her nervousness, a slight waver in her voice. He puffs out smoke with a long exhale and then says:

“Get me the coordinates of your location. We’ll be on our way.”

The snail starts to smile, relieved.

“I’ll call back once I have them!”

When he puts the receiver down he wonders when he started to let his guard down so easily.

_Her hair was long and her body was tall_

_Her face was hidden in shadows_

_“Don’t you ever give someone your all_

_or dare to believe in your heroes._

_They’ll leave you for good, like everyone does_

_And you’ll be too scarred to not take the blame._

_And if you still do, well then it’s your loss.”_

_And she left him too because she’s the same._

_He lived by her words and it was no bother_

_Since both never knew the meaning of ‘mother’._

“…So the latitude and longitude coordinates are: 64.141716, -21.926638. Three weeks you said? That’s fine, I’ll be waiting there. Send a message an hour before you arrive…

…and than- That’s all. Bye, Mr. Crocodile.”

“Wait.”

“What is it?”

“Your crew has multiple allies, no?”

Silence.

“… _Had_ , yes. We don’t anymore if that is what you were asking for. I don’t know if you noticed but were not really a crew as of right now.” The way she says it is too bitter for the chiming voice of a ten year old.

“I am aware that your entire crew is in shambles.”, Crocodile says dryly, showing no sympathy. “Also according to your answer, I assume you were familiar with a few different crews that probably followed Doflamingos lead too, at least before he died. Am I correct?”

“Yes.” Sugar murmurs, “no need to rub it in, though.”

Crocodile ignores her disdain. The entire time he’s been wondering about something else entirely that didn’t quite follow a rational lead, at least after his observations. “These crews followed you years with utmost loyalty. I understand that some of them deserted after Doflamingos fall or right after his execution. But there are a lot of crews that still remain loyal although the captains change, die or the dynamics within the crew shift, mainly in order to keep the benefits of the association with an infamous crew like yours. I did the same.”, he says, briefly thinking back to Baroque Works and how that had ended. There were still people that raised the Baroque flag and it worked solely because of the name they used to have on sea. “You would have profited more from reaching out to one of these crews. I do not doubt that you would’ve been capable of finding and convincing them. So, tell me: Out of everyone, why contact us?”

Sugar, who quietly listens to Crocodiles analysis, quickly says: “I wanted to contact _you._ ” She shakes her head, although he can’t see her. “Not your crew.”

“That does make even less sense. Who told you that was a good idea? Don’t tell me you came to this conclusion yourself. You didn’t. You’re too witty to make such a foolish decision.”, He waits a moment for Sugar to chime in and say something, but she remains quiet and listens to what he has to say. “Your master and I weren’t really cooperative people and in even in retrospect we weren’t really capable of working together. Needless to say an alliance came never in question and so didn’t any kind of help even if your ship was about to sink to the ocean floor.”

“I wouldn’t have contacted you either.” She defends herself ,”I just followed the young masters lead!”

“ _His_ lead?”

“Yes. I didn’t agree with him either at first. But the young master knows what’s right and he always had our safety in mind. I trust his decisions.”

How anyone could actually fully trust the maniacal warlord was a riddle of its own. He had acted his role on the world stage so greatly that it had become impossible to tell his persona and his person apart. It was so ridiculous that shortly, before his demise, no one really knew whether he was wearing his true heart on his sleeve or if it was just another script that he’d get disposed of after the play was over.

A functional _perpetuum mobile,_ Crocodile thinks, that’s what he had been. A paradox in person.

“How did he do that?”, he asks, asking two questions at once, one directed at Sugar and one at his thoughts.

“How did he do what?”

“How on earth did he convince you all that it would be in your best interest and for personal safety to come crawling to _me_ if everything goes to shit?”

“He told me _._ I don’t know if he told anyone else. We were talking and it just sort of came up because of a conversation”

“And you chose to take casual words of meaningless conversation and give them the weight of your world?”

“You’re a really cold man, Mr. Crocodile. Do you know that?”

_That’s cold, Croco-Bastard. I’m impressed._

Familiar. The word crosses his mind as if lost, fallen out of the dictionaries in his head. He pressed his lips together, cigar squeezed between them but before his thoughts could go on Sugar continued to talk.

“…He said it in a way where I knew it had meaning. It actually took me a while to figure out what he meant. But when I realized, I knew that this must’ve had a purpose. The full purpose however only dawned on me when it was too late already.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Why should I tell _you?_ ”

“Because I seem to get involved into something I had not a clue about. And since you’re begging me to come by, I think I deserve to know the exact circumstances to understand how this kind of situation came to be.”

“I didn’t _beg._ ”, she protests but Crocodile hears that she doesn’t even believe this herself, “I _negotiated._ ”

“Sure you did. Now out with it.”

“…I was asking something about the new shipments we delivered. Nothing important really, just how much more we had to deliver because the high production rates took a toll on the young master. He seemed … a little frantic, I think? Now that I look back at the circumstances it was probably because of the stupid straw-hat and their… _god.”_ The snail visibly shudders.

“A-Anyways, I asked and he told me that at the moment this would remain the Status Quo for a while. I suggested getting help from some of our underlings to make things move faster. He told me what I told you before. How pirates shouldn’t take help except if they have to. But I found myself wondering about that, because he didn’t disclose help entirely. So I asked if, in case something was to go horribly wrong, he had someone he’d involve for help or assistance. He just laughed and said ‘over my dead body.’ And I thought that was it, that it just was some quote that underlined the danger of trusting pirates.”

Sugar takes a deep breath after speaking so quickly.

“I didn’t expect him to mean this literally.”

Crocodile lets out a silent sigh tainted with frustration. He doesn’t try and attempt to recreate whatever had been going on in the flamingos head. It was territory where all of his tools became useless and all the conclusions he made suddenly grew horns and wings and attempted to bite him before flying away sideways.

“A few day later he told me to follow him. I had no idea what he was thinking of, but of course I did and he led me to one of the exhibition rooms of the palace, to a display case that showed small stuffed animals. He then turned towards me and said: ‘You got me thinking. A few days ago. As long as I’m here everything and everyone’s fine but what would others do to you over my dead body?’ He seemed so- he talked really quietly and with a sort of hard edge in his voice. It was strange because he was in deep thought while addressing me, like he was…lost somewhere else? I don’t really know how to describe it. It was so unlike him it unnerved me a little, although I’d never distrust anything young master does.” She stops and the snail blinks twice. “He kind of sounded like you, Mr. Crocodile.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“You sound like you always have a hundred different things on your mind that go nowhere because you make an effort to not let them.”

That was surprisingly spot on, and Crocodile raises an eyebrow slightly impressed. At the same time the way how she instantly landed the hammer on the nail also felt somewhat familiar. Far away but familiar.

“Hm.” He makes an approving noise to let her know that he isn’t offended about her comparison. “Go on, brat.”

_“..tly like that”_

“Huh?”

“Nothing, Mister. Anyways, he asked me what I knew about evolution. Scientifically. I had no clue and I don’t really care about that and I was about to say that when he suddenly went: “Did you know that feathers evolved from scales? Birds from reptiles? We don’t know exactly _how_ but we know it’s true.” And he points into the display case where stuffed lizards and small birds are exhibited. They were really creepy.”

The snail shakes its head in confusion. “I still didn’t know what he was going on about and I told him so. Then he turned back to the display case and said, ‘that’s fine. If I ever die, Sugar, just follow the line that is closest to us. While they’ll never learn to fly, they’ll always stay grounded.’ Then he showed me a poster on the wall that explained reptiles and pointed at one of them. ‘If I’m gone, contact Crocodile. He’ll know what to do even if he thinks he doesn’t.’ And with that he walked out on me before I could answer and locked himself in his room for the rest of the day.” The snail stares at him firmly.

“I know it seems rather unbelievable but I promise I couldn’t make this up. He was acting differently. I never knew half of the facts that he listed and I don’t know where those came from.

“Don’t worry about that. I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Because I am the one who told him those.”

“Oh.” The snail hangs its mouth open for a moment. “That… explains a lot. So _you_ _do_ know what to do, right?”

“No. But apparently that doesn’t matter.”

He hangs up immediately. He doesn’t trust his voice to say more.

_“Are you suggesting similarities, Crocodile?”_

_“That was purely scientific. It has nothing to do with us as people.”_

_“Well, now it does.”_

_“And where do you conclude that from?”_

_He tips his finger at his temple, a sly grin spreading on his face._

_“I just decided.”_

_His mood is oddly infectious._

Meeting her goes surprisingly unspectacular. They arrive in the deep North and it’s cold and he hates it. He’d always thought of frost and ice as phenomena that slowed everything down and he couldn’t help but feel that whenever it was ice cold, time was running slower. While water-rich environments were the counter to his body, firn and hoarfrost where the counter to his mind. The few houses and barns in the distance were bedded in a shroud of crystallized water droplets and glowing light that only an early morning in march could produce. Abandoned remnants, locked in a fog of time.

He has the coordinates saved in his head and approximates his way to the meeting destination. No help needed, but Daz insisted in coming with him “to make sure everything goes according to plan, Boss,” and while he accepted the help because it’s Daz and no one else, he nearly had laughed and retorted “What plan?” Instead he kept a sinister face and said. “Very well. Follow.” Daz had seen him drop his impenetrable act a little too often the past few weeks and he plans on rebuilding his cracked shell with _Carrara-marble, Statuario._ It’s going to be hard work, but it’ll be worth it. He’ll pay with persistence.

They arrive at a large mansion, surrounded by nothing but dead trees and steep cliffs. Time has taken its toll on it but it didn’t manage to take the gleam of pride away that radiates from its massive walls of stone. It stares down at him like _he_ had and something twists and tightens in his chest, right above his diaphragm. He’d thought their hideouts would be less… _pompous_ , but then reminds himself who he’s dealing with. In a way it’s so obvious that it was no wonder that it had never been found until now. _Hiding in plain sight,_ he thinks. Against the basics of logic but along the basics of human psychology. It irks him. The way it shouldn’t work but does reminds him of the way Doflamingo could pierce someone with his look while wearing tinted glasses. It irks him that he’ll never be able to compare them side to side to prove how similar they were.

It irks him that he’d handled everything like it was a puzzle he was too unbothered to solve because the pieces were not fitting the way he wanted to, but now that he figured another part out, he’d already lost the parts he’d assembled.

They enter the building, carefully, after discovering the door unlocked. While hidden under a sheet of dust, the main hall seems more grey than anything else but underneath shimmers gold and red velvet. The air is as cold as outside and when they breathe out they can’t tell whether its moisture or the remains of a dying house.

“You’re here,” a voice says suddenly. Crocodile and Daz look up the large flight of stairs that leads to the many rooms of the mansion and a top stands a little girl, covered in a dark cloak. Her bright turquoise hair is a fleck of colour in the room.

Crocodile immediately recognizes her. It’s not like he’d seen her often and the last time he saw her had been quite a few years ago but she hasn’t aged a single day. It eerily emphasizes the aspect of time standing still at cold, frosty places.

“We’re here,” he confirms. “But not to waste our time. Show us where to go.”

Sugar nods, turns around and says while walking away: “Follow me.”

Crocodile turns to Daz. “Be alert at all times. Don’t get to close too her. If you forget _why_ you’re here, knock her out. Don’t let her touch you. Understood?”, he orders quietly.

Daz just nods. “Absolutely.” Crocodile draws on his cigar satisfied before following Sugar up the flight of stairs. When it comes to following orders up the most minute detail, Daz is unbeatable. He never questions them too and Crocodile finds himself relying on him a little more often than he intends to. He doesn’t question his thought process behind it, simply because he rather avoid something that would unlock another maze in his head that he can’t afford to get lost in.

Sugar leads them to a small library in the corner room of the upper floor. The books are sinking in even more dust than the rest of the house and it’s not a far step to conclude that even during the usage times of this mansion, the library wasn’t the most visited place. When they reach the back of the room however, there’s one shelf that’s dusted off and the colours of the book spines pop in an uncomfortable way.

Sugar turns around and looks at them, for the first time up close. She looks small and fragile which contradicts the self-confidence in her eyes. She gives Daz a wary look and Crocodile says: “Don’t mind him. He’s here in case we get found. Safety first.”, and Sugar looks like she accepts that explanation.

“Before I show you,” she says firmly, “I want to know what I get out of this.”

“Well you wanted… protection from the Marine?”, Crocodile realizes that they never fully agreed on her side of the deal. He dislikes that realization, because it meant that he had let himself convince into something where conditions had not been a 100% planned out.

“I think I am in need of this, yes. For an unlimited time too.”

Crocodile raises his eyebrow at the kid. _Brash_. She stares back stubbornly, waiting for confirmation. He knows that’s not all she wants.

“What else?”

Sugar takes a deep breath and goes for it.

“I want my own room, but close to your centre of operation, I want 24/7 protection, a batch of new clothes, regular access to the news, a consistent delivery of purple grapes, a personal snail and all of this at least until there’s something I can do to get to my family. Is that clear?”

Crocodile notices Daz’ mouth open a little in disbelief.

He just smirks slightly and says, “I heard you, you demanding brat. Now, I’ll have to judge the amount of valuable information you have for me to define exactly how many of your demands are worthy of being fulfilled.”

Sugar looks at him grimly, then proceeds to pull various books half out of the shelf, each one letting out the clicking noise of a lock snapping open. The shelf folds into the wall, opening like two leaf doors, revealing a room hidden from prying eyes. He looks at Daz to confirm his order one more time and Daz understands and stays back.

He steps in.

The room is very much what he’d expected it to be. A small bureau, much like one of his own, with ink pens, papers and a snail on the desk. There are small shelves in the windowless room and a rather decent lampshade in comparison to the bell-bottomed chandelier in the main hall. The shelves are stacked with folders, files and loose binders, overflowing with paper. One folder lays spread out on the desk, the sheets hastily torn out. Crocodile recognizes them as the ones Sugar had read to him three weeks ago. A work room, nothing more.

He feels like an intruder and something tightens in his chest, yet again.

“I’ll get to work right now. The faster I’m done, the faster you’ll receive your wishes.”

Sugar nods. “All right. Do y-“

“No.”

She gives him a look.

“I don’t need help. I don’t want it either.” He clarifies and indicates that he knows exactly what she’d wanted to ask.

She gives him one more look, then shrugs and says. “I’ll be down, getting my belongings and checking if I missed something. Call me, when you need something.” With that she leaves but not without reluctantly glancing back, unsure if she should trust the tall, scarred man to really take her with him or not.

* * *

He needs one entire afternoon to sort everything out. It’s a mine full with illegal gold, wanted names and forbidden locations and it makes him wonder just how insane the flamingos bets and plans were. Crocodile knows, he barely scratches the surface of all the things he’d been part of and it gives the taller man another dimension to his already hard to capture ~~existence~~ legacy. Every bit he discovers of him fills another gap of the riddle he is but it takes a shape that Crocodile can’t describe with words anymore. It’s _bothersome_.

The worth of information would, rationally calculated, provide Sugar with a lifetime of protection. He’s not sure if he will tell her this right away but it’s clear that he has to provide her at least with all her demands to make this a fair deal.

He hasn’t checked the desk drawer yet. There’s a small lock on it and after looking around, there’s no key to be found. Unsurprisingly it’s also locked, which means he doesn’t get the content in there in normal ways. He sighs, touching the drawer with his right hand until the wood crumbles into sand. A picture frame falls into the dust, the glass shattering upon contact with the floor. The sound is muffled through the grains on the ground but it’s loud enough to make him stop breathing for a split (0.0001) second.

He takes the frame off the ground, removes the shards and looks.

_The picture travels back with him._

_It finds a new desk drawer as a home, carefully locked away, resting peacefully_

_next to a single feather._

When they’re about to leave, Crocodile turns towards Sugar.

“We’ll burn it down.” He points his right hand to the mansion. Sugars eyes snap up to him in disbelief and she opens her mouth to protest loudly, but Crocodile interrupts her before she can make a sound. “We left traces of ourselves there. The information in there will become absolutely worthless once the Marine finds it, as all information does when too many people know about it. If that happens, I have no reason to provide you with _anything_ and I’ll be better off tying you to the next Marine flagpole. Do you get that?”

Sugar snaps her mouth shut, having nothing to retort but she’s visibly agitated and angry. Her tiny shoulders shake and her breathing gets heavier. He can see her eyeing her hands, thinking about just leaving him behind as a toy and he sharply says: “Don’t.”

Her hands sink down before she pulls the hood of her cloak over her head. “Fine.”, she says, voice breaking. “But I’m not watching this! I’m not! You can’t make me!”, and she runs ahead, towards the direction of the ship that Crocodile gave her minutes before. He briefly considers following her but then he leaves it be. What would he have done anyways? Water’s his weakness and tears are no exception. She’ll be fine. He’ll watch for her, that’s the warmest thing he can do as a person.

He turns to Daz , giving him the signal to start. While he’d been collecting data he’d ordered Daz to prepare for incineration.

The colours blend with the fiery colours of dusk. Fire, he knows, is **rapid** **oxidation** of substances and materials in an **exothermic** **chemical** **process** of **combustion** that causes a **chain** **reaction**. It releases **heat** and **light** and various reaction products such as **H 2O** (phase: gas) and **CO 2** (phase: gas). It is hot because the weak O2 double-bond converts into the stronger bonds of the previously mentioned products. The energy release per mol O2 (or 32 grams) is approximately **418** **kilojoules**. The moment you visibly start to see the fire is called ‘ **ignition** **point’** or ‘ **flash** **point’** and the visual part is referred to as ‘ **flame’**. They consist out of Carbon Dioxide, water vapour, oxygen and nitrogen. The needed requirements are something of **flammable** or **combustible** **material** in combination with **sufficient** **quantity** of an **oxidizer**. In science this is named the **_fire_** **_tetrahedron_**.

Fire can not exist without all of these elements set up **in** **place** as well as in the **right** **proportions**.

The back left corner of the mansion suddenly bursts in an inferno and he knows that there will be nothing but shreds of blackened, frail paper left from the library.

The house burns, flares and puffs ashes and flames into the icy air, heating it up. The old wooden floorboards scream out before succumbing to the fire. The house holds on and _survives_ for as long as it can. It’s like he’s seeing the fight of a will, destined to die, that _wants_ to live. Something Doflamingo wasn’t granted to have. So he watches the scene that feels like a tribute done too late until the mansion is nothing more but a simmering ruin. Then he lights one of his cigars in the glowing coal of the burnt floorboards and smokes it in close proximity to the once-had-been-walls. It’s his way of paying respects. He’s sure the taller man would’ve understood.

The radiating warmth of the fire site gives Crocodile the distinct feeling of time moving forward again.

A second

Another

A minute

Two minutes

Some more

Three hours

A dozen

Four days

Five days

Six days

More days

A week

Eight

Weeks passed. They went by and the days blended into one another like a smudge of paint. Except for his businesses, not much has changed. The money flows in rivers, the new contacts were carefully played out against each other and he crafted his path through the Underworld without revealing himself to anyone. But he’s doing what he had been doing for years now, just on a 225% scale.

Sugar, despite her appearance as a child, blends into his circle surprisingly well. She’s a pirate after all. They don’t have much to do with each other, except for occasional identifying of several contacts or crews to see where they could be from. Apart from her original demands, she doesn’t ask for much. He supposes that it’s her way of grieving and leaves her be.

He hasn’t found his way, now that he thinks of it. Because he never thought it a possibility to grieve for anyone, let alone _Doflamingo_. Then again, no one taught him to, so he _[22;9;24;25;22;18;23;0;6;5;7;15;0;24;19;0;12;13;23;0;18;25;17;6;9;22;23;0;19;18;7;9;0;5;11;5;13;18]* (::/Start Value:5) ((translation→: chapter_notes_end/1))_

_[25;13;10;30;0;21;23;20;27;14;9;10;0;25;13;10;0;20;19;17;30;0;16;14;19;9;0;20;11;0;8;20;18;11;20;23;25;0;13;10;0;8;6;19;0;26;19;9;10;23;24;25;6;19;9;.;0;7;26;25;0;25;13;10;30;0;28;20;19;25;0;7;10;0;6;7;17;10;0;25;20;0;21;14;8;16;0;26;21;0;25;13;10;0;21;14;10;8;10;24;0;28;13;10;19;0;13;10;0;7;23;10;6;16;24;.;0;6;19;9;0;13;10;0;28;14;17;17;.;0;6;17;17;0;25;13;10;30;0;8;6;19;0;9;20;0;25;13;10;19;0;14;24;0;14;19;8;23;10;6;24;10;0;25;13;10;0;19;26;18;7;10;23;0;20;11;0;7;23;20;16;10;19;0;21;6;23;25;24;0;13;10;0;17;10;6;27;10;24;0;7;10;13;14;19;9;.]*(::/Start Value:6)((translation→:chapter_notes_end/2))_

He returns into his old routine so quickly, that he’d be frightened how easy it was to fall back into old habits if it isn’t so familiar. And if he knew how to properly fear. But this too was a luxury he was never granted to learn, so he just sits at his desk and offhandedly notes the dull feeling that slowly builds into pressure within him. Waits patiently for the moment he cracks under it.

The calendar says he’s been waiting for eight weeks now.

It’s a normal day in his bureau on the ship when it happens. He sits at the desk, alone, writing down his plans when his pen suddenly stutters and his calligraphy curved words become ugly scratches on paper, unreadable.

He stands up quickly and locks his door. Sits back down, lights a new cigar though the old one’s not finished.

And allows himself to _accept._

_[…]_

_And I was dancing with my ghosts_

_~~'Cause I could never let them go~~_

_[…]_

And he didn’t know why it had affected him so much. It was a major part of the shame that filled him whenever he thought about it-which he never did- just how much a few words, a touch of lips, of different human skin had caused within him.

Perhaps this was exactly the fault of his logic. He tried to function so hard, so flawlessly that his core being ceased to exist. Or was at least reduced to a vegetative state, where existence became a vague term but could certainly not be called living anymore. It was there. And that was really the only difference from it not being there. And when he allowed himself, _Himself_ , to exist for a bit it was like opening Pandora’s box without hope left at the bottom.

_[…]_

_Now, well, I’ve got to,_

**_They’re no longer here_ **

_[…]_

For a few hours during a cloudless night he got to try another flavour of living. It was similar to sugar, a little less sweet but with a slight tang of freedom and recklessness . It was addicting. And he stuffed his mouth with more and more of it, got high on the rush it provided and considered never letting go of the stars he reached, the warmth of breath he felt.

The sunlight and the low hit him in cacophonic unison and left him stranded with one empty hand and one empty hook and the hollow understanding that happiness wasn’t created for the heinous.

Though the next day turned out to be filled with warmth and spring leaves stretching in it, the way the sun rose that day could solely be described as nauseatingly bitter.

Both of them silently agreed to leave each other be, so they could learn to taste something else again.

Taste lingers long time.

He would know. Tobacco’s bitter too.

_But,_

_he’s chasing a phantom and the only way to catch a piece of it is if he learns to let go._

Coping with death can be hard. Even if the emotional distance between the grieving and the dead was, expressed in numbers, about 20’037,5 kilometres. Or 12’450.72 miles. Which was about half the circumference of the earth.

They truly couldn’t have been further apart.

Truly.

 _Truly_.

_Something tightens in his chest, yet again._

He looks at the picture in his drawer. He looks at the picture of the Family. He looks at the man who towers over them, arms spread and coat flared in a manner that could be interpreted, _but_ _only_ _interpreted_ as protective. He looks at the eyes covered with a pair of crimson glasses that hide something yet still show _so_ _much_. He looks at the broad smile where no one could tell if it was joyous or maniacal. He looks at the person behind the image and sees someone whose death didn’t kill what matters. He looks and starts to understand while the picture slowly burns away in his fingers.

[…]

#####  _Sometimes your guilt just wears a face._

**_Fin_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Number code translations:  
> • *1: returns back to his numbers once again.  
> • *2: They provide the only kind of comfort he can understand. But they won’t be able to pick up the pieces when he breaks. And he will. All they can do then is increase the number of broken parts he leaves behind.
> 
> ##### Well, it's time that I let all the dead be the dead  
>  There's no honor in suffering  
>  No reward 'cause you've bled
> 
> The song strewn in is _Guilt_ by _Radical Face_. Please consider listening to it. The entire EP _Therapy_ by him is a work of pure gold and lyrical beauty. I know I’m writing a lot of dumb stuff in the chapter notes, but if I can convince at least one reader to listen, I’ll consider it a victory.  
> So we are done. This gave me more than one headache to finish. It’s a mess but so am I, and therefore I’ll accept it.  
> The scales and feathers fact is true too! We learnt that in my biology classes and for some reason it stuck with me forever.
> 
> I think I got all my experimental writing urges out of my head and I can finally return to normality again. Sorry about that. But whenever I see possibilities to _change_
> 
> ##### a
> 
>  **font** , I’m going for it. In that regard I’m probably five years old.  
> -  
> So, now to _you._ (That’s not a threat I swear)
> 
> Thank you for reading. Thank you for sticking through it until the end. It means more that you could imagine. A special thanks goes out to everyone that wrote something, you were all incredibly nice and it was a huge motivation for reaching the finish line!  
> Until (maybe?) next time.  
> 😊  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Warned you.


End file.
